


My Mother, My Heart, My Coming Into Being

by chlorinetrifluoride



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First War with Voldemort, Gen, Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape Friendship, Marauders' Era, Postpartum Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:38:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/chlorinetrifluoride
Summary: Why didn’t Lily jump out the window with Harry and Apparate while James held off Lord Voldemort by sacrificing himself? Perhaps it was fear based paralysis that left her rooted to the spot. Or perhaps, in her own way, she knew far more than she let on.





	

**Author's Note:**

> ah yes, one of the fics i always wanted to write. i've been planning out this fic in one form or another for the last four years. 
> 
> why didn't lily run for her life? cushioning charms and apparition should have been concepts she was familiar with, since she was said to be an intelligent witch. so i decided to take her intellect and (pardon the pun) run with it to my conclusion: that she knew exactly what she was doing by staying. since she bore no knowledge of voldemort's horcruxes, she would have likely assumed that going through the steps to make such a sacrifice would have finished him off outright. a chance worth taking, then.

_Who stands over the river?_  
_Whose feet go running in these rigid hills?_  
_Who comes, warning the night,_  
_shouting and young to waken our eyes?_

 _Who runs through electric wires?_  
_Who speaks down every road?_  
_These hands touched mastery; now they_  
_demand an answer._

 - Muriel Rukeyser

* * *

_**1980 - 1981** _

Petunia does not attend the christening, though she sends a card, one you tack onto the refrigerator with a permanent sticking charm. The entire house could collapse around you, but that small square of paper would remain in its proper place. When Dudley’s time comes, held in the new church they’ve built in Surrey, you stand in one of the back pews, beneath a Disillusionment Charm. He does look ever so splendid in his gown, and Tuney so proud, that you wish you were near enough to touch them both. Embrace Tuney, and run a warm hand across the forehead of her son’s.

No matter, though. No use in disturbing the peace.

It’s good that you’ve drifted apart since your parents passed away. It’s good that your sister found someone just as concerned with appearances as she is, someone normal and upwardly mobile. It’s good that Vernon disapproves of you and James, it means they will be in less danger when the time comes.

 _When what time comes?_ you faintly ask yourself, although you know the answer. You’ve lived in the Wizarding World for ten years now, but death is no less insurmountable here. No returning from that threshold once you’ve crossed it. No spell, no potion, no incantation, no special circumstances.

All the things you’ve witnessed, but death is a universal constant. Go figure.

And Voldemort will want to kill you, that is why you and your son are in hiding. You don’t know the specifics, only that he believes your son to be a threat to him based upon a prophecy. James found the very idea ludicrous, but you’ve seen so many wondrous things that you believed it with little persuasion.

A paranoid little voice in your head whispered that such a pronouncement would be the perfect pretext for keeping you off the front lines, you, Lily Potter, who looked Death Eaters in the face with a cold stare, and had trouble showing them the mercy Dumbledore requested of his Order members. Sure, you’d never used an Unforgivable, but that was as far as your clemency extended.

_(“Would they do the same for me, Professor? Would they let me stand trial? Would they even take me alive?”_

_“That is hardly the point, Miss Evans.”_

_“I think that’s exactly the point.”)_

Were that the case, he needn’t have made up such a story to keep you in line.

You stopped dueling with vehemence one evening in 1979. You’d been cornered in an alleyway just outside Strathclyde by a pair of them, your dueling partner occupied elsewhere. You’d seen her cast red sparks, the universal sign of emergency, but were unable to reach her. And ace as you were, the chances of you taking both of them were successfully slim to none. Then, one of the men in black did the oddest thing.

He cast Stupefy and a memory charm on his partner. He dropped his wand, raised his hands in acquiescence, and closed the distance between the two of you in a few long-legged strides. Pupils dilated with fear, you trained your wand on him. No matter if he was unarmed, for there were heinous things certain Death Eaters did to mudblood witches that required no spellwork whatsoever.

He grabbed your shoulder, rough and desperate. You were a half second away from petrifying him, when he opened his mouth.

“Run,” he muttered, his voice familiar. “Get least ten blocks, back past the row of flats, before you even think of stopping.”

With your free hand, you wrenched the mask from him, just to confirm your suspicions. You peered into the dark irises, let your eyes rove across the sallow face, the dark circle rimmed eyes, and the hooked nose. You touched the tip of your wand to a deep gash on his cheek, and mended it wordlessly.

Why, you didn’t know. You still don’t know. Maybe a kneejerk from healer training; first do no harm. Maybe a kneejerk from the days he used to come over to your house with fresh bruises from his father, and you walked him to the nearest magical dwelling you knew, just so you could fix them without tripping your Trace.

“Sev?” you asked. He snatched the mask from you and reaffixed it without a word.

“I told you to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

As if it were ever safe in these skirmishes. Besides, you were not planning on moving until you understood exactly what he was playing at. You placed your hands on both hips, and shook your head emphatically.

“What did you do Sev? What are you doing?”

“Get out,” he repeated. “Please.”

It was the naked terror in his tone, his stricken expression on the last word that got you moving at last. You ran, retrieved your unconscious dueling partner, and, levitating her all the while, kept going until the whizzbang sounds of hexes and curses were damn near inaudible beneath the din of muggle traffic.

Once you saw Marlene into the hands of more capable healers, you fell into deep contemplation. Not that this was noteworthy. Thoughtful Lily. Swotty, snotty Lily. James often remarked that he had no idea what was going through your head at any given time.

“Too much to say,” was your usual response, accompanied by a peck on the lips.

“Do you think people can ever truly change?” you asked Remus later, the two of you taking tea in his drafty sitting room. You made a mental note to start preparing his Wolfsbane this week, with the new recipe you’d devised, if you wanted it to be complete before the full moon.

“I think it depends on the circumstances, and the degree of the change.”

You told him exactly what happened in the alleyway, and requested that he keep it to himself. Then, you asked him if he thought it was evidence of anything significant, and after apologizing, he said that couldn’t possibly be sure.

“You knew him best, Lily.”

That you did, but that was over three years ago, before he became the stuff of your nightmares, before he and his mates killed you over, and over, and over, and you awoke, screaming and groping at your scarlet bed-hangings.

Still, it got you into wondering if all Voldemort’s followers were marching in perfect lockstep with his ideology. Maybe some could be redeemed. Nothing is ever black and white.

You never get your answer regarding Severus. Not in this life.

Day in, day out, you sit around with the same surroundings. Sure, the seasons change, time passes, and every so often, when you are certain Padfoot or Moony or James are keeping a careful eye on things, you slip outside, beneath the invisibility cloak, and take in the outside air. Never with the baby, though. He is far too important.

You walk through Godric’s Hollow and marvel that you should be living here. You, Lily Potter, a mum, and everything. All the ideal futures you’d created for yourself, and not a one included this. Not that you’re upset about being a mother. That brings you joy, almost as much as your Potions work.

 _Serendipity_ , you think, watching a leaf flutter free from a tree and fall to your feet. _So much serendipity in your life._

Harry’s conception had been unplanned. Either you, James, or both had been careless with the contraceptive potions.

Moreover, you’d only found out you were pregnant after yet another Death Eater battle. You’d been hit with the Cruciatus once but somehow gone into status epilepticus, something that only happened to pregnant women. Many people convulse outright after sustained bouts of the Cruciatus, but few have seizures.

Sirius, whose second you had been at the time, had accompanied you to St. Mungo’s. When the Mediwitch informed you that you were expecting, he stood there, utterly gobsmacked, and asked, _“expecting what?_ ”

Obviously, you weren’t encouraged to fight in your condition. So you did not.

Then, Dumbledore told you and James of the prophecy, and instructed you to go into hiding. You whiled away the days watching your abdomen swell, offering tea to any Order member who happened to come by, and hoping your husband would come home in one piece. He was still allowed out and about, as long as he was wearing concealing charms. For what it was worth, he did. So did Moony, Padfoot, and Wormtail.

They were each so excited to have a new Marauder to teach their tricks, even if your child wouldn’t be the right age for that for a while yet. You were excited too, particularly when you felt the baby move. However underneath that thrill, you were terrified. You gazed out the windows and wrung your hands, one hand on your belly, and the other on your wand..

This was no place in which to raise a child, with news of new deaths coming in each day. Dementors swarming entire towns and blanketing them in gloom. Inferi marching through train stations en-masse. The Daily Prophet could barely keep up.

You would not see your baby brought up in a warzone. You wanted so much more for him, giant lollies and soft blankets, swingsets and a world without fear except of falling down, toy broomsticks and trips to the theater, beach outings and lullabies.

The things you wanted had a way of bringing you to tears.

A year later, and they still do.

James and Sirius and Remus and everyone else say it often happens with new mothers, moments of sullen despondency. And the latest piece of news from the headmaster, that there definitely exists a spy for Voldemort in the Order, which everyone already suspected anyway, possibly within your circle of friends, makes you feel even more miserable.

All you worked for, to harbor a traitor in that organization. A traitor within the ranks of people who are supposed to be helping to keep your child safe.  

Sirius listens to you with a particularly empathetic ear, sitting outside with you on your front porch while Remus and Peter read to the baby upstairs. He doesn’t even object when you smoke your contraband cigarettes, although he does swipe a few whenever he gets the chance.

“Lord Voldemort is trying to kill my baby, and everyone’s telling me to cheer up,” you say, exhaling a great cloud of smoke into the evening.

Sirius shrugs. “I never once told you to cheer up.”

“Since you damn well know better,” and it’s the first time you’ve smiled in a while.

Sirius doesn’t return the gesture.

“But driving yourself ‘round the bend about it isn’t going to change a fucking thing.”

This scruffy bastard in all his leather jacketed glory has a valid point.

“I don’t understand what else I’m supposed to be doing, though,” you confess. “I can’t fight for the Order. I can’t train as a healer anymore. I can’t even leave this place most of the bloody time!”

You punch the siding of the house, and when you draw your hand back again, realize that your knuckles are now bleeding.

Damn, you were that angry?

You fix the scrapes nonverbally, and apologize to Sirius for your loss of temper.

“S’no problem, Evans,” he assures you. “Still, I’d rather be you than me.”

He stubs out his cigarette, technically your cigarette, in the flutterby bush. Your flutterby bush, which you have been lovingly cultivating since your Herbology professor let you take a few cuttings at the end of your 7th year. You’ve long since given up on telling him off for that, but you are nevertheless annoyed.

“And why do you reckon that one, Black?”

He gestures back toward your house, at the window of Harry’s room, where the lights are on, where your dearest friends play with the dearest person in the world.

“Least Moony trusts you,” he explains. “Won’t tell me a thing. I push, he pulls. Right fucking nightmare.”

Suddenly aware of how cold you feel, you cross your arms over your chest, and allow yourself to feel sorry for someone who isn’t you or James for the first time in a good while. You let Sirius rest his head against your shoulder and try to neaten his hair a tad.

“You can’t seriously tell me he thinks you’re working for the other side,” you tell him.

“He’s wondering why the Death Eaters haven’t made an example of me yet. They could if they really wanted to, ‘specially since Reggie’s gone,” he says. “And, frankly, I want to know the same thing.”

“Your family line…?” you offer.

“I’m a blood traitor and I’ve been disowned. I think they’re just keeping me around to watch me suffer, honestly.”

“Well, then, it seems to be working,” you return.

He gazes at you, unblinking, for a moment, and then laughs himself silly.

You shake your head at him. _Of course, Sirius. What should you have expected?_

Starved for intellectual stimulation, you try to come up with other reasons why Death Eaters would leave him be. Maybe they plan to take him hostage to see what James will do, to see if they can gain access to you and Harry that way. Maybe they plan to recruit him, although you think they know he’d sooner set himself on fire than join them.

You haven’t the foggiest clue.

He avails himself of yet another one of your cigarettes, and you threaten to start smoking menthols just because he hates them. He points out that you hate menthols more than he does, to which you counter that you are just spiteful enough to start smoking them if it means he’ll stop bumming smokes off you.

“Do it, Evans. I dare you.”

That night, at dinner, he and Remus acknowledge each other with curt nods, but little else. James notices the atmosphere, but doesn’t bring it up until after everyone’s gone, at which point you bring him up to speed with the fact that there’s a spy in the Order. More damnably, perhaps one of the very people he calls friends.

It’s evident from his scowl that he’s having none of that. During the next meeting, he flat-out walks out, and refuses to return.

To him, friendship is a sacrosanct force, like religion, but even more inviolable. The more Dumbledore suggests one of his friends might be a spy, the more furious James gets with the headmaster.

At home, he rants, raves, and rages, pacing the hallway, pacing this glorified prison, frustrated beyond belief.

“Doesn’t know a thing about us Order members, us Marauders! We stick together, no matter what. Since first year, Lily!”

One of your old china teacups explodes by accident, thankfully nowhere near Harry. You’re not sure whether he or James did it. Or you. You nod and repair it.

“I know.”

James apologizes - maybe it was him, then -  and scoops you up into his arms. You intellectually know would never hurt you or the baby; this is just pent-up anger, essentially harmless. What’s a broken teacup, really? You’ve definitely done far worse in terms of accidental magic.

Stilll, you gingerly peel yourself away from him, and take a step backward. He apologizes again. You take one of his hands in both of yours, and marvel at how his old Quidditch calluses are fading.

“I’m sorry,” you reply.

How you’ve always hated those two words. As a Trainee Healer before you got pregnant, you’d said them more than once to grief-stricken relatives in the Venoms and Poisons ward. As an Order Member, you’d said them more than once to others, then had them said more than once to you, a sort of call and response before a newly deceased body, or a freshly closed casket.

So yes, you despise _“I’m sorry”_ with legendary vitriol for its threadbare meaninglessness, but it’s the only thing you have at the moment.

You try to tell them - Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs - to hold onto each other, that they’re all they have, that they’re very nearly all you have, but your entreaties fall on deaf ears. Remus insists he suspects Sirius of nothing, and Sirius insists the same of Remus, even as they watch each other constantly. Neither of them suspects Peter. How could anyone, when he spends all his time flinching at his own shadow?

Not even James can restore their old dynamic to its former glory, no matter how often he swears up and down that he trusts them all unconditionally, and that Dumbledore’s clearly off his rocker. The only time all of them reconcile for any great period of time is when they’re watching Harry. You’re happy to allow this. To commit these moments to memory, to preserve them so you can replay them when you’re too exhausted to believe they really happened.

You want impossible things for them, yes. Crying things, as well, crying because these are no differential equations in Arithmancy, nor papers on Wenlock’s Third Axiom for Transfiguration, this is real life, and here, in the harsh light of day, you are powerless.

You want to stand between them and every Death Eater alive; you want to protect every muggleborn. You are weary of memorials where Professor Dumbledore tells all of you that this person or that person died for the greater good, to further the cause against an unspeakable evil.

But you can’t do anything.

Death is death is death is permanent is whiter than infinity, and sometimes you cannot help feel like it doesn’t matter how you die. You’re all pieces in this game of war. The odds that all your friends - the ones who are left - will survive this thing are almost zero.

You don’t need a Ministry statistician to tell you that.

Harry spits milk up on his onesie, and you clean him off. He flings his rattle away and hits the cat, forcing you to stifle a giggle.  

Still, you fall into a bluer study. You stop cleaning things around the house. Dishes pile in the sink until James decides to wash them. You wear the same clothing for days on end. You forget to bathe unless James reminds you. You stare at Harry and you wish he were gone, not because you don’t love him, but precisely because he is your life, and he is in danger. And since you can’t take back the pregnancy, since you didn’t cross over to the muggle world to have an abortion, you despise him, and you despise yourself even more.

A warzone is no place to raise a child. You don’t want him to take part in any prophecies that would strike Voldemort down. Let someone else do it, someone grown. Why doesn’t Dumbledore do something? He’s the only one Voldemort feared, and yet he has others die in his stead.

You despise the Headmaster as well. Sad as you feel, you are determined that you and James survive this war. You will not leave your son to be turned into one of Dumbledore’s chessmen.

You struggle to force your mind to function with its old nimble aptitude. You struggle to function. You recall an old play, and silently recite lines from it.

_There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts._

You think in circles, in slow circles.

_There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o’ Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference._

Rue, an abortifacient amongst witches. You would have done well if you’d kept some around.

_—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died._

You remember your father’s heart attack, Tuney begging you at the wake to fix him, to bring him back, and each time you tried to gently explain that magic didn’t work that way, she’d insist that she hated you.

_“What are you lot good for then?” she demands, from your sixth year of Hogwarts, stronger than a memory, but weaker than true presence._

You wish you’d pursued further studies in Transfiguration, and learned how to make one of those stone basins to contain all your thoughts.

You wonder if your graduation gift to Professor Slughorn continues to exist.

You wonder what would happen if you went after Voldemort yourself. Sirius would probably be up for it. _That means it’s an awful idea, Lily_ , you say to yourself.

You wonder if you just might be going mad.

You tell James about some of what you’ve been feeling, and instead of being alarmed, he just nods.

“Sort of figured. My aunt was like this after her first child.”

“And what happened to your aunt?”

James considers this. “Well, before she died, she was a great mum.” His color drains. “Not that you’re going to die!”

The wizarding world calls what you have the melancholy of mothers, and all you can do is inwardly rage at yourself for being weak. You’ve never worn vulnerability well, it was never something you wished to allow yourself. 

You are a mudblood, and to be a mudblood meant you had to be better in every way, that you were fighting a battle each time you showed your face amongst wizardkind.

Being in the Order was just an extension of what you’d trained yourself to be.

However, inaction forces you to turn all your ire inward. As it turns out, there’s a lot of ire, and a lot of sorrow.

While James is sleeping, you slip out of bed to set Harry’s mobile into motion. You pluck him out of the crib and talk to him gently. Instead of cooing at you the way he might have were it not three in the morning, he starts to wail. You weep with him, lost for soothing words.

You weren’t exactly made to be a mother, you figure.

That’s the way James finds you an hour later. You stand at the window, rocking Harry back and forth. He whimpers and you weep silently. James enfolds the pair of you in his arms, and you allow yourself this momentary vulnerability.

He assures you that your depression will lift in the future. It’s just a temporary state.

Meanwhile, Harry assures you that there will even be a future. Each day he lives is a mouthful of phlegm spat in Voldemort’s face.

On Peter’s day to watch Harry, you sit on the porch with Sirius, smoking cigarettes. Well, in his case, smoking and drinking. He and Remus have broken up, therefore Sirius has a fifth of Ogden’s Old in the bag slung over his shoulder. James would fall over if he knew, but you have been sworn to secrecy.

“I dunno jack shit about mother’s melancholy, but I know a thing or two about regular melancholy,” he says.

You already knew that. He attempted suicide when Regulus died. You almost fainted when another healer found you in the Venoms and Poisons ward to tell you. Even when you two were still at Hogwarts, with all your real tragedies ahead of you, he was hardly emotionally stable. Sometimes he was up and reckless, sometimes he was down and regretful, and sometimes he just was.

“So what do you suggest?” you ask him, fiddling with the split ends of your hair.

“There’s potions that can help. Mind healers, too. You talk to them about your issues.”

You sigh. “I’m not allowed to leave this house.”

Sirius grins and takes another swig from his bottle.

“Since when has that ever stopped you?”

True enough. The next day, you force yourself out of bed. You force yourself to think of something other than endings. You pace the sitting room.

You need to act. But it’s as if your mind is windblown, foggy, as if your cognition issues underwater, too slow for you to string two coherent thoughts together.

You need to clean, yes. You do. You need to feed Harry. You do. You need to do something else.

You need to do what Sirius has suggested and pull your head out of your arse. That day, you ask Remus to watch Harry, so you can go to the largest muggle university bookstore you can think of. James is out on Order business.

Remus hands you a piece of chocolate, while you put the finishing touches on your disguise.

“Why are you leaving this time?” he asks.

“I need more books on pharmacology.”

He assumes it’s so you can continue to brew the Wolfsbane Potion with a tenth of the lethality of Damocles’s recipe. He thanks you by squeezing your hands. When you open them again, there’s a chocolate truffle there. Oh, Remus. You kiss him on the forehead.

Yes, lidocaine and atropine have served you well. However, you have other substances in mind.

In the bookstore, standing in front of a shelf, you run your finger down names of medications and their functions, deciding on one after two or so hours. The rest is easy. After using a Confundus Charm and a strategically placed Imperius Curse on a muggle physician, you walk into a chemist’s with a prescription. Once the chemist fills it, you apparate back home.

Remus is none the wiser.

So begins another one of your experiments, one that should not take long to finish. In NEWT level potions, Professor Slughorn had you brewing things that took up to three months to complete, running basic reactions that could take an entire day. You are no stranger to this.

You find a mind healer, one you trust from training, one you trust from the Order, who is willing to make floo-calls. You show her the bottle of amitriptyline.  She is less than approving of your experimentation, even when you remind her that you were the only one who worked out a treatment to Cruciatus convulsions: diazepam. 

The progress you make over several weeks reminds you of clouds lifting. You start to laugh again. You dance with James in the sitting room, when he’s not on Order assignments. You don’t even envy his ability to come and go as much as you used to. You and Remus clean together. You and Sirius commiserate. As for Peter, well, he’s the only person other than Harry who makes you maternal. You want to dry his eyes. He followed his mates into the Order and he’s terrified of the directions he’s been given.

You’re not completely lucid - you don’t know if you’ll ever be Old Lily, Hogwarts Lily. You’ve accepted your possible demise, and that of James as well. It depresses you, but doing nothing depresses you more.

So as you pace the halls of this house in Godric’s Hollow again, you contemplate the Fidelius Charm. Snippets from books you read an eternity ago, on other protective magic. They only gave you a cursory idea of what could be done, and it wasn’t as if you’d been reading them carefully. You hadn’t needed to read them carefully back then.

Sometimes, when you’re alone, you floo-call members of the Order and ask them if they possess certain titles. Sirius helps you here. He’s been disowned by his mother, but his mother isn’t the only family he has left, and he gets along with the Slytherin Order members more than you expect. He even asks favors of them.

“Don’t worry about it, Lily, I understand them better than you think.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “Way back when, I almost ended up in Slytherin.”

“Perish the thought,” you joke. You don't fire back that the Sorting Hat had suggested the same thing of you.

These favors happen to consist of borrowing various books, the sort that have been handed down from generation to generation. Books on old magic. Ancient magic, if you wanted to be frank. Maybe as old as Hogwarts. Maybe as old as Merlin.

You annotate feverishly on sheets of parchment, long after James has gone to sleep. You hide these sheets from him with equal fervor. It’s easy when there are few rolls of parchment. It’s less so when there are so many that they’d put your 7th year Potions thesis to shame.

“Don’t worry,” you murmur to Harry. “Mummy’s going to save you. One way or another.”

Sirius comes over to shout at you, once he’s figured certain things out. Upon seeing you, though, he shouts in a whisper. A paradox.

“You can’t be thinking…” he begins, unlit cigarette in his mouth. While delivering the books to you, he’s paged through them himself. Although his grades weren’t the greatest, he’s shrewd where it counts. He’s put the pieces together, at least.

“And if I were?” you ask, voice cold.

“Prongs would have a fit.”

“I’m only reading,” you counter. “For all we know, Voldemort will fall, or the spy won’t tell, and I won’t have to do anything.”

“Which is why you’re hiding your notes,” Sirius counters.

You don’t have an answer to that, but you’re beginning to understand what the Headmaster meant by “the greater good”.

“I’m trying to protect my only son, and others,” you tell Sirius. He lets out a suitable string of swear words. Your mum would have boxed your ears for such language.

Nevertheless, you swear him to an uneasy secrecy.

“You should tell Dumbledore,” Sirius says. You nod.

“Oh, I will.” You light your own cigarette. “In due time.”

You brew Remus’s Wolfsbane for the month of June, and if he happens to show up while Sirius is around, well, you won’t say whether or not you did that intentionally. At least they’re civil to each other now. Almost friendly. Remus senses you’re keeping something from him, but doesn’t press the issue.

So does James. He asks you what it is, and you offer him a wan smile.

“Nothing important.”

You need to speak to Albus Dumbledore, but you don’t know how to go about doing that. Could you floo-call Hogwarts?

If he doesn’t know, your ideas could go up in smoke. Although you take your medication, although you speak to your mind healer - not about your ideas, just about your emotions - the sadness creeps back in. You’re at an impasse. After a week where you wander the house like a ghost, James figures you’ve been affected by another melancholic spell.

You tell him that you want to speak to Professor Dumbledore, and he nods hastily. Dumbledore, yes. Even if he’s wrong about the traitor in the Order, he knows a great deal. Perhaps he can fix you, James figures.

An overcast summer afternoon several days later, Dumbledore appears on your doorstep.

“Mr. Potter wished for me to speak with you personally,” Professor Dumbledore explains. “He thought I might be able to advise you, and said you had expressed the desire to speak to me.”

“That I did.”

After you pour him a cup of tea, you show him the collection of notes you have amassed. Most of the books you’ve copied from have long since gone out of print - volumes with yellowing pages and crumbling bindings - and the fact that this information is new to him shows, although not too conspicuously.

You have to mentally congratulate his poker face.

“You’ve been keeping busy, then, Mrs. Potter,” he says lightly.

He speaks the name “Mrs. Potter” the same way he once spoke “Miss Evans”, with warmth and pride, but also a certain amount of condescension. You suppose it must be par for the course, being someone like him, having so few peers. You’ve stopped begrudging him this. You’ve stopped begrudging him a lot of things. Anger takes energy you no longer wish to expend needlessly.

“I’ve been studying up on blood magic,” you tell him.

“As I can see,” he replies, his fingers steepled carefully. He takes a gentle sip from his cup, and sets it down on the little patio table in front of him.

“I’ve read that there are certain potions, certain incantations that can imbue an extra level of protection on a child, if prepared properly, by the mother.”

He nods. “I would say that you are correct in your findings. And I would go on to state that your research is perfectly understandable in light of the enemy you face. You want to keep Harry as safe as possible.”

“That’s part of it,” you agree. “But there’s more.”

“Oh?”

You remove the last few sheets of parchment from your robes, and pass them over to Professor Dumbledore. The moment he finishes reading marks the first time you’ve seen true and genuine shock on his face.

Interestingly, it makes him look younger. He picks up his teacup and eyes you with more than a modicum of disquiet.

“You are aware of the conditions of invoking such magic.”

“More aware than you could ever know,” you reply. “I only ask you, based on your expansive knowledge, if you think this plan could succeed.”

“It’s a reasonable theory, but this sort of spellwork most likely hasn’t been attempted in centuries, Mrs. Potter. It would be taking a dangerous chance.”

By his expression of finality, the matter should be resolved. Certainly he thinks it is. You asked him for his wisdom, he gave it, and now you will obey. However, you cannot help but be annoyed. He has used so many others as unwitting pawns in his fight against Voldemort, taken so many dangerous chances with the lives of others, and yet this is what gives him pause.

_A sacrifice voluntarily considered._

You shake your head, then, a few loose strands coming free from your ponytail. “No, Professor. It’s a hypothesis. It’s not a theory until it’s tested empirically.”

That same disquiet again. His hand, wizened and wrinkled, quivers briefly on the hand of his teacup.

“I gather that you intend to test this hypothesis, then.”

“Should it come down to it, yes.”

He nods once, brisk, businesslike, and very much in control again. “Does Mr. Potter know of your plans?”

“Of course not,” you admit, flicking your wrist idly. “Do you intend to tell him?”

A second passes with all the speed of a century before Professor Dumbledore responds.

“I do not.”

You chat awhile more, aimless nonsense mostly. He brings you up to date with the Order plans, in a show of denial, you suppose. Either you will hide out in this edifice (for the most part) until someone else takes down Lord Voldemort, or he’ll seek you out, find you, and… well, that will be that. Either way, you are a member of the Order of the Phoenix in name only.

“Still, you may not have to test anything, young Lily,” Professor Dumbledore says heavily, before he takes his leave. “Have you no faith in your friends?”

You stare at him with your mouth slightly agape, confused and distressed. After all his warnings, is he trying to play devil's advocate?

That’s when you burst into tears, like a dam overflowing, drowning everything in its path. He catches you in a one-armed embrace, the other hand holding onto the back of the chair. He lets go of the chair, and offers you his handkerchief, which you accept.

“I don’t want any more of them to die,” you reply fiercely. “Not if there’s a way to prevent it. To end him once and for all. Can you begrudge me the right to try?”

“That I cannot.”

You offer him your hand to shake.

“Then we have reached an understanding, sir.”

He shakes his head, beard swishing gently with the gesture.

“One more thing, Mrs. Potter,” he tells you. “For this plan to come to fruition, Voldemort will have to offer you your life. It isn’t sufficient for you to sacrifice yourself. He has to give you the chance to live first.”

 _Oh. Wonderful._ You figure crying again won’t do much.

“Do you think he will?” you ask.

Dumbledore smiles one of his inscrutable smiles.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

He looks as if he wants to say something more, but merely tips his hat to you before disapparating with a crack.

Later, James tells you that he’s no longer allowed to go on Order missions, not even under a disguise.

“So it’ll be the two of us here then.” You smile. He kisses you on the mouth, and you feel an old warmth blooming within you.

“Until the end,” James says.

But that’s not quite the end.

You go on one more of your not-allowed journeys, and meet up with your sister.

For once, aside from the cloak hood covering your face, you wear no concealing charms. You beg her to swear that she will care for your child if anything should happen to you. 

At first, she gazes at you with alarm, and pretends not to know you, but then you two walk a few blocks. Far away from anyone whom she respects. You let the hood drop.

“You saying that nutter’s still after you?” she asks, softly.

“Yes.”

“But your side, they can protect you,” Petunia hisses, putting herself between you and her son, as if whatever you have is contagious. _“You said they were protecting you!”_

You can’t tell her about the spy in the Order. First, you’d have to explain the Order, and that alone would make her faint. You settle for sighing loudly.

“Even the best laid plans go awry,” you say to her. “So do I have your word?”

A pigeon perches itself atop Dudley’s pram, and Petunia, tight-lipped and too frazzled to speak, swats it away with her handbag, glaring at you as if you somehow summoned it. Even if you possessed an avian familiar, pigeons would be dead last on your list, right above seagulls.

She rearranges herself, her clothing, her hair. “Yes, yes. Whatever.”

“And you’re not just saying this to get rid of me,” you press on.

It’s imperative that she consent to do this. If not, the remainder of your strategy could disintegrate like burning parchment.

She takes your hand, squeezes it briefly, and lets it drop.

“You’re my sister. He’s my nephew. Of course I’ll take him in,” she promises. Then, with a pained half-smile. “Although Vernon will throw a fit, most likely.”

You offer her the same sort of smile in return. “Thank you.”

You make to stroll to a clearing from which you can safely Apparate, but Petunia calls after you.

“Be careful!”

You turn, nod once, and wave in recognition. Oh, you will be careful. You will be ever so careful, and Petunia will keep her word, and Harry will be safe. All of them will be safe.

James is elated to see you in such high spirits when you return, and it’s almost exactly like the old times.

The phonograph in the sitting room crackles out muggle music from your Hogwarts days, while you and he sway in place. He suggests that you don your disco pants, and put on slightly more questionable music. You bop him on the nose with your fingertip.

You pick little Harry up and dance with him too, cradling him in your arms. He makes a grab for your hair, and you kiss his knuckles before he can. Long after James falls asleep, you watch the baby in his crib. Occasionally, he’ll open his eyes - your eyes - and blink at you.

Weeks pass. More deaths. More horror. More joyless gray in the sky.

James is out with Remus an hour before Harry’s birthday, while the birthday boy slumbers peacefully. James said he’d send Sirius along to watch over you two, so you have no time to lose. Theoretically, you could confund Sirius, but you’d really rather not. You’re not fond of confunding friends.

You possessed enough foresight to have finished the tricky part, preparing the potion. It’s only missing one ingredient, which is not to be added until a critical moment. Everything in a precise order.

It’s almost like being in Professor Slughorn’s class again, and you hold onto that thought, because it relaxes you even as the rest of you feels keyed up with the thrum of magic.

You cast the first spell, watch as a silver thread extends from your hand to Harry’s and disappears. You cast the second spell, and the thread flickers more brightly before it fades. You glance at the clock. 11:47. Still within the safe margin.

You remove the vial of potion from your pocket, and uncork it. Using a spell you learned in training, you make a small cut on your finger, and dribble a drop of blood into the vial. The potion smokes for an instant, and turns a deep violet. You cast the third spell, verbally this time.

That’s when Harry wakes up, confused by the smoke and the sound of his mother’s voice. You pick him up, carry him downstairs, and put him in his high chair, which perplexes him even more. This is not eating time, and he knows it. You cast the fourth spell, mindful of your intonation.

You search for any sign of Sirius in the sitting room or the kitchen, but he’s nowhere to be found, and ebullient enough that you’ll hear him coming a hundred feet away. Probably got into an accident on that blasted motorbike.

So you murmur feverish incantations as you add quickly add the potion to a bit of mashed plums. You have no idea what this child’s fixation with plums and apricots is, but you’ll take what you can get. Spell five, cast. The silver thread holds for nearly half a minute now, thicker and brighter than ever, and Harry laughs at the light show. As he plucks curiously at the thread, you feel a tug against your own wrist.

“Plum?” you ask him, holding the spoon up to his lips. He giggles and opens his mouth.  

You feed him slowly, with one eye on the time. When he’s more or less halfway finished, you cast the sixth spell.

He needs to finish it by midnight, but he also doesn’t need to spit it all back up, because you’ll only have this chance once. After he’s done, you gaze at the clock. Five to. You’re fine.

The seventh spell requires the longest incantation and the greatest number of wand movements, but you’ve practiced it so many times without speaking that it’s become something like second nature. You cast it, and have just enough time to inhale before the entire room luminesces, white and blinding bright, and above all, _undeniably powerful._

Anyone capable of using magic has an instinctual sense of its intensity, and this far is beyond than anything you’ve ever managed. The willow of your wand creaks in protest, but you don’t loosen your grip on its handle.

However, you do grab Harry, who cries out, and attempt to shield him, afraid that you have done something dreadfully wrong and missed some key step. Still, instead of obliterating you, the light dissipates, leaving nothing but the silver thread from the first spell. That flashes once, and blinks away.

Harry blinks at you.

“Mum?”

You hold him even more tightly.

“Yes, yes, Harry. Mummy’s right here.”

Sirius arrives ten minutes later.

You try to pretend everything is normal from then on. For the rest of your life, really.

Because on Halloween, you find out that your words to Petunia were absolutely correct. Even the best laid plans go awry. You wonder which of your friends was the spy, and decide that it doesn’t matter. James distracts Voldemort by offering himself, giving you time to grab Harry, jump out the window, and Apparate somewhere. Anywhere.

You consider Sirius’s flat, and ask yourself if he was the one to give you up. If it was Remus. If it was Peter. It had to have been one of them.

No, it couldn't have been Remus or Sirius, you realize. They weren't the Secret-Keeper.

Peter, then, you think with dawning horror? Scared little Peter?

James's plan backfired, then. You gaze at the window again. Voldemort casts the killing curse on your husband, and you bite back the urge to scream.

As for the decision to leave, well, it all comes down to whether or not you trust your spellwork. If everything goes as planned, you will have done what no other witch or wizard before you has. You will have stopped an unstoppable evil.

You grab Harry and open the window. You chew on your lower lip.

Then you set the baby back down in his crib, and put yourself in front of it. Lord Voldemort blasts the door open, ending your ability to choose either way. 

Mortality is a strange thing. Here you’ve been, ready to die for the longest time, and now, facing down Voldemort and his bone-white wand, you do shake in your house slippers.

“Please,” you ask him. “Don’t do this.”

He merely chuckles, uses magic to set Harry’s mobile into motion, making it tinkle out its tinny little song. Your grip on your wand tightens.

“Stand aside stupid girl, it’s not your life I want,” he says, appearing almost bored by the whole exchange.

Your eyes glitter, gaze almost as cold as his own. He seems to think that you’re on the verge of tears, the arrogant bastard.

“Crying won’t help you, Lily Evans. Now, move aside.”

You do your best not to grin at him.

_A critical choice, knowingly spurned. A sacrifice from a mother, willingly made._

“No. I won't.”

You feel the echo and thrum of magic pulling at your wrists, and you feel them with you, everyone you have ever loved and lost. You think of James downstairs, and wonder how far away he really is. You extend your wand, and move to stand directly in front of your son’s bed. You spare a final glance at his untidy, wispy dark hair, and his almond-shaped, green eyes.

Your Harry.

Though your peaceful expression gives Voldemort the briefest pause, he sighs and exhales in exasperation. He grins, his lips nearly disappearing in the gesture.

“If you wish to do this the hard way, so be it.” He raises and lowers his wand in one rapid, slashing motion. _“Avada Kedavra!”_

You scream your son’s name. The jet of green light hits you straight in the chest. 

First, you are white infinity.

And then you are the black of void. _Unseeing. Unhearing. Unspeaking. Unknowing._

* * *

The next time you see your son, he is a teenager, and you are utterly shot through with the burden he must shoulder. You are mere memory brought back by Priori Incantatem, and yet you are still furious at Albus Dumbledore for allowing Harry out of his sight. Why else would he be in this graveyard? You are briefly furious at yourself, because there was still enough of Voldemort left over to bring back. Your sacrifice meant thirteen years of uneasy peace, and nothing more. 

What you can give your son is time to run. You catch James's eye and know he's thinking the same thing.

* * *

Then, merely three years later, at the end, you meet Harry for the last time. The Resurrection Stone. You could cry, but you do not. Your son has played his part in this war. And now, he's being sent to his own death. You can do nothing to prevent it.

The least you can offer are some words of reassurance, even as your voice catches in your throat.

* * *

_Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough._

_“You’ve been so brave.”  
_

_He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough._

\- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

**Author's Note:**

> so, that's that, the end of an idea i've been kicking around since 2012. i really hope you enjoyed reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it.
> 
> post-script:  
> i think i mentioned in a few fics i've written or half-written - "the waste land", "visions and revisions" - that my headcanon for lily as a potion brewer is one that includes her incorporating muggle chemicals to compensate for the failings of potions. i further established in "those of great ambition" that lily was at one point set to become a healer. you really don't have to read those fics, and if you do, mind the warnings. 
> 
> moreover, atropine and lidocaine are both known treatments for aconitum poisoning. aconitum is also known as wolfsbane, and my personal headcanon is that there's a certain amount of aconitum in the wolfsbane potion. finally, amitriptyline is an antidepressant and a sedative that would have been in use in the early 80s, one lily uses to treat herself. i think the phrase "don't try this at home" applies here.
> 
> hope that clears up any pharmacology-related confusion.


End file.
